Democrats, come January, you’ll be in the majority in the House and most probably the Senate. But you won’t have the power to be as vengeful as some of you would like to be.

Sure, the past 12 years have been rough on you.

You’ve been systematically excluded from key congressional councils where decisions are made and deals brokered.

Your opportunities to offer legislative alternatives have been procedurally strangled by the Republican leadership.

You’ve watched as the time for votes on the House floor has been extended for hours while the Republican leadership twisted arms.

Bottom line: For the past 12 years, you have been substantively marginalized and politically sliced and diced.

The Lord has said that “Vengeance is mine,” but your gut tells you that you deserve a piece of the action, too.

Don’t go there.

And don’t kid yourselves. You did not win the election on Tuesday. The Republicans lost it. Machiavelli wrote that it is better for a Prince to be feared than loved, if he cannot be both. Remember that in winning you carried an overwhelming number of independent voters – people who neither fear nor love you.

What you gained Tuesday is an opportunity in the next two years to do some good and to prove yourselves worthy of winning in 2008.

So don’t blow it.

But how?

First, recognize that you are still a petitioner lobbying the voters. You’ve got to meet them where they are before you can take them to where you want them to be. And where they are is sitting in a pool of massive cynicism. They doubt your motives and your capabilities. And with good reason. They’ve been promised change but have seen members of both major parties fall into patterns of arrogance and out-of-touch complacency time and time again.

They want leadership that is – not just appears to be – more interested in doing a job than in keeping its job.

They want their lives to be easier in terms of the things they care about: their health, the education of their children, and their physical and economic security. If you don’t speak to these issues, they won’t be interested in any other grand plans that you might have in mind.

Second, you’ve got to convince voters that you and your proposals are a credible mechanism for achieving their agenda. You can’t be like the restaurant that spends a ton on advertising but is surly to its customers and offers food that’s a lot less than delicious.

Common sense perceptions and word of mouth will always win out. If the voters see you talking about how great you are and what great things you are going to do, but you act like a bunch of self-satisfied jerks, the hypocrisy will kill you.

If you give people any reason to doubt you – if, for example, you promote an energy conservation plan that you say requires mutual sacrifice, and then drive away in your own gas guzzler – they will seize upon that inconsistency and reject both you and your plan.

If it’s a serious problem – such as retirement security or environmental fragility – then propose a solution and an allocation of resources that measures up to the task at hand. Otherwise, you will have neither done good nor built up the public confidence that effective leadership relies on.

Third, you’ve got to make sure that things don’t degenerate into a winner-take-all partisan game. The Madisonian system of checks and balances has served our nation well, but the same structure can help to disillusion people about government when it inhibits action or, at worst, leads to dysfunctional governmental gridlock.

Finally, Democrats, what is needed for your own partisan sake and the well-being of the country is for you to breathe life into an ethos that fuses the spirit of the Sermon on the Mount (blessed are the poor, the merciful, the justice seekers, the peacemakers : ) with the demands of practical governance. Recognize that in an enduring democracy, victory is measured not by the humiliation of the opposition but by the advancement of the public good with balance, determination and grace.